Global warming not taken seriously: World Bank's Kim

Apr 10, 2014

A handout picture taken on January 16, 2014, and released by the United Nations-African Union Mission in Darfur shows a farmer working in a dry field in the outskirts of al-Fasher, North Darfur

Global warming is not being taken seriously and time is running out to avoid consequences like flooded cities and dried out farmland, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said Thursday.

"We are quickly coming to the point where we are not going to be able to keep global warming below two degrees Celsius," Kim said at the start of the IMF-World Bank spring meetings in Washington.

"Warming by two degrees Celsius is going to have major implications.... 40 percent of the arable land in Africa will be gone at two degrees Celsius; Bangkok could very well be underwater at two degrees Celsius," he said.

The World Bank is making efforts in several areas to fight climate change, including developing carbon pricing and trading schemes, financing for renewable energy, and pressing governments to remove energy subsidies.

But Kim expressed worry that many had stopped thinking about climate change as an urgent problem.

"This is one of those things we here... we have talked ourselves out of taking it seriously," he said.

"But in 10 years, 15 years, when battles break out because of lack of access to water and food, we are all going to be sitting there, thinking: Gosh, why didn't we do more back then?"

"I am extremely concerned about it. I don't think the world is taking it seriously enough yet."

The president of the World Bank on Saturday warned the finance chiefs of the world's leading economic powers that global warming is a real risk to the planet and already affecting the world economy in unprecedented ways.

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At last an article that emphasizes how important the subject is, but makes it obvious how preposterous "warming" is.

Think about it, if we magically and instantly raise the Earth's temperature 1 degree average for some amount of time. What happens after that time? A return to equilibrium is what-a cooling response from the Earth's natural buffers (glaciers, 4 degree water density, water-temperature depth changes, etc). It happens every night when the Sun goes down. If we wanted to quantify the effects of CO2, we could do so instantly by measuring the cooling rate difference. But their isn't a significant one, so you won't see it at Phys.org.

So when we talk about "warming" what do we really mean? We mean a semi-irreversible change in the amount of local heat. Which means, heat added to glaciers also known as melting, heat added to water (ah there's a temp increase...), and so on.

HOW CAN I SEND YOU MONEY?Money, Money, Money. How did I know that we would soon see the problem through the eyes of an Economist?It is not about the economy. It is about the planet that gives you your next breath. Leave the Economy to one Ben Bernanke. He knows what he is doing. He said so himself.And what he is doing is handing the batten over to a nice little old lady and slipping out the back.And now back to the real world.

It's all about money. The planet stopped warming 17 years ago. None of the predicted disasters actually happened. You can only keep crying wolf for so long before people just ignore you and organized bullying won't help either.

What would it mean to raise the temperature of the Earth?It would mean we'd have to define the average, I suppose by measuring many nearby points and averaging them, accounting for ENERGY differences with humidity, height, etc., and determining that it was at some equilibrium.If you are still with me, you're beginning to see what a bad indicator temperature is...Then we'd need to somehow meaningfully state that the temperature has gone up compared to that equilibrium. That means equilibrium from glacial/polar melt, that the ocean surface temperature must have increased, semi-permanently, that the air temperature must have increased... etc.If you were to use temp., the most important factor would be surface ocean temperature. Easily measured, readily available, yet you can't find it. Why? 70% of the Earth's surface and a stable temperature of more than 400 meters, if it changed it would be noticed.(OK-You can find "global," El NinXs, but not that simple thing.)

@gregor1- I am afraid you drank the kool-aid. Don't worry, only the kool-aid color changes with what side of the issue you are on. Both sides are being forced to drink.The primary effect we're concerned about isn't temperature, it's heat.For example-a glass of water with ice in it. The temp: 0C. The Sun beats down on it, but so long as there is ice, it stays 0C. You are adding heat without changing temp..The Earth is more complicated than that, but it's pretty obvious that it is much better protected than a glass of water.

""But in 10 years, 15 years, when battles break out because of lack of access to water and food, we are all going to be sitting there, thinking: Gosh, why didn't we do more back then?""

The Club of Rome predicted this WAS going to happen 20 YEARS AGO.These predictions will ONLY come to pass IF the socialists gain control of the world.Without centralized planning and with free markets and ingenuity, such predictions are specious.That's the conundrum for socialists, gain power and obtain your disaster or give up your quest for world control and avert the disaster you predict.

@vlaaing peerd- CO2 is a red herring. If CO2, or insulating the Earth were the problem, for example, the Earth would warm, yes, but weather would stabilize, like the temperature in your home, not become more extreme, as we observe. There are other indicators.

No the heat of the Earth is changing because we are releasing more of the Sun's energy into the system. In the form of burnt fossil fuels. They are the Sun's stored energy from millions of years ago, released today. Worse, it is released as waste energy, so very little of it is able to escape until it gets to an environ that is colder than where they are released, aka the arctic.

As a general rule, when Freeman Dyson comes to a conclusion, it is the correct conclusion and those who believe otherwise are left stranded in some remote corner of reality.

To ask you what: why would you trust an opinion of somebody who didn't win Nobel Prize (as opposed to The Inventor of Internet)?

You won't get very far if you start counting opinions of real scientists (the adjective is intentional -- to exclude some lesser breed). I had disappointing communication with one Field medalist to check if those petition signatures are real; well they are. For the second example, witness reference to realclimate.org on Terry Tao's page -- another clear reflection of popular belief among the very top of science pyramide.

You flatearthers and deniers do realize that warming by two degrees Celsius is going to have major impact on several agricultural systems on which the human race depends! A change to 4C is even more devastating. Mankind is heading into the sink, but the flatearthers continue to spam phys.org with laimness.

As a general rule, when Freeman Dyson comes to a conclusion, it is the correct conclusion and those who believe otherwise are left stranded in some remote corner of reality.

You won't get very far if you start counting opinions of real scientists (the adjective is intentional -- to exclude some lesser breed). I had disappointing communication with one Field medalist to check if those petition signatures are real; well they are. For the second example, witness reference to realclimate.org on Terry Tao's page -- another clear reflection of popular belief among the very top of science pyramide.

"Generally speaking, I'm much more of a conformist, but it happens I have strong views about climate because I think the majority is badly wrong, and you have to make sure if the majority is saying something that they're not talking nonsense." - Freeman Dyson

""But in 10 years, 15 years, when battles break out because of lack of access to water and food, we are all going to be sitting there, thinking: Gosh, why didn't we do more back then?""

The Club of Rome predicted this WAS going to happen 20 YEARS AGO.These predictions will ONLY come to pass IF the socialists gain control of the world.Without centralized planning and with free markets and ingenuity, such predictions are specious.That's the conundrum for socialists, gain power and obtain your disaster or give up your quest for world control and avert the disaster you predict.

Give it up. No one cares about your mythical socialist bogeymen. Your beloved free market dominates the world economy, and the chickens are coming home to roost.

But that doesn't stop this heating from inducing a number of feedbacks which result in stronger, more intense climate/weather variability, increasing ice loss, increasing sea level, and, ultimately, increasing natural emissions of CHGs via more forest/peat fires + permafrost/clathrate methane releases.

For this reason, fossil fuel use must end --and end now, while we still have a prayer of preventing a much longer-term or runaway warming feedback.

Willful disunderstanding --as has been pointed out overandoverandoverandoverandoveragain--doesn't change the facts or the mechanics of the situation, so you can drop the chicken/egg, means/end, circular ass-backwards idiocy now, and maybe retain a shred of credibility.

How can the article be taken seriously when phys.org.AGWagenda attaches a photo that is obviously staged?

It's a file photo, who cares?

Generally Freeman Dyson is correct in his field of expertise. Climate science is not his field of expertise.

Freeman Dyson is generally incorrect when he discusses global warming, not because he can't understand it, but because he is approaching it from his unique perspective that he distrusts the majority opinion on everything. He doesn't say it isn't happening, he says he doesn't know but distrusts the suggestion that a majority must be believed.

SHootist, it is too bad you are so ensconced in a denialist stance to understand what he is actually saying.

"Basically, he doesn't buy it. The climate models used to forecast what will happen as we continue to pump CO2 into the atmosphere are unreliable, Dyson claims, and so, therefore, are the projections. ""I think the difference between me and most of the experts is that I think I have a much wider view of the whole subject. I was involved in climate studies seriously about 30 years ago. That's how I got interested. There was an outfit called the Institute for Energy Analysis at Oak Ridge. I visited Oak Ridge many times, and worked with those people, and I thought they were excellent. And the beauty of it was that it was multi-disciplinary. There were experts not just on hydrodynamics of the atmosphere, which of course is important, but also experts on vegetation, on soil, on trees, and so it was sort of half biological and half physics. And I felt that was a very good balance.

"Thirty years ago, there was a sort of a political split between the Oak Ridge community, which included biology, and people who were doing these fluid dynamics models, which don't include biology. They got the lion's share of money and attention. And since then, this group of pure modeling experts has become dominant.

I got out of the field then. I didn't like the way it was going. It left me with a bad taste.

Syukuro Manabe, right here in Princeton, was the first person who did climate models with enhanced carbon dioxide and they were excellent models. And he used to say very firmly that these models are very good tools for understanding climate, but they are not good tools for predicting climate. I think that's absolutely right. They are models, but they don't pretend to be the real world. They are purely fluid dynamics. You can learn a lot from them, but you cannot learn what's going to happen 10 years from now."http://e360.yale....?id=2151

"Obviously he wanted to write a piece about global warming and I was just the instrument for that, and I am not so much interested in global warming. He portrayed me as sort of obsessed with the subject, which I am definitely not. To me it is a very small part of my life. I don't claim to be an expert. I never did. I simply find that a lot of these claims that experts are making are absurd. Not that I know better, but I know a few things. " - Freeman Dyson

"My objections to the global warming propaganda are not so much over the technical facts, about which I do not know much, but it's rather against the way those people behave and the kind of intolerance to criticism that a lot of them have. " - Freeman Dyson

" No doubt that warming is happening. I don't think it is correct to say "global," but certainly warming is happening. I have been to Greenland a year ago and saw it for myself. And that's where the warming is most extreme. And it's spectacular, no doubt about it. And glaciers are shrinking and so on. " - Freeman Dyson

"I am not an expert, and that's not going to change. I am not going to make myself an expert. What I do think I have is a better judgment, maybe because I have lived a bit longer, and maybe because I've done other things. So I am fairly confident about my judgment, and I doubt whether that will change. But I am certainly willing to change my mind about details." - Freeman Dyson

"Perhaps this was an accurate summation of the report if you read it a certain way. But equally, it was accurate to report, as Breitbart London did, that it was basically a wish list for the eco-fascist new world order.

Or - as some other newspapers did - you could decide that the report's main take home message that the IPCC had now come round to the virtues of nuclear energy and was guardedly approving of shale gas.

How could the report lend itself to such different conclusions? Because it was written by a vast international committee and then tinkered with further by politicians in order to be all things to all men.

Problem is when you try pleasing everyone you end up pleasing nobody."

It's staged propaganda. You should care, as it makes your cause look silly, foolish, and unbelievable.

It's not my cause, it's not a scientific paper, and it is not as silly as denying all science because spotted owls were less endangered than they were made out to be by some environmentalist fringe group.

Let me guess, you don't understand the difference.

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